Printmakers do it on a bed, under blankets!

2 Ginkgoes

FDL Artists Association Award 2015

“I’ve been told I’m eccentric”~ Rocky

After 33 years in a Wisconsin college classroom teaching anatomy, forensic science, and pathology, Roxine (Rocky) McQuitty retired to Washington State where she studied art at Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle. Eventually yearning for snow, Rocky bought a historic house in Fond du Lac, WI where the architect’s master bedroom suite is now her printmaking studio.A compulsive knitter and blanketeer for Project Linus, Rocky travels between Washington and Wisconsin lugging quilts, art, yarn and fabrics.Roxine works in a variety of mediums and creates one-of-kind jewelry as well.

"Maybe we should have been drawing with crayons, magic markers, something vivid."

I’m excited by color. Sunsets, mostly. Hours and hours of the setting sun in Iceland. Sunrises, too, especially across Lake Washington in Seattle. My approach to art is to maybe try something and see what happens. However, as an ardent contrarian, the first thing that happens is that I cannot do what I’m supposed to do so I have to come up with something else, usually very unorthodox, breaking so many rules that I don’t like to confess how I got there. The drawing instructor I hired decades ago remarked, after many lessons, “Well, Rocky, I thought I could teach anyone to draw but………”

Pen and ink

Acrylic painting

﻿Why print cutting boards?

PRINTMAKING is the most fun to do of all the art forms. Every time I pull the blankets back on the press bed, it is just like Christmas! Others in the print lab sometimes get caught up in the excitement and they run over to my press to share in the joy of "unwrapping the presents!"

​In my former life I was concerned with fingerprints and footprints, tire marks and tool marks. Now, I am concerned with cutting board marks. When I discovered these marvelous boards with their distinctive shapes, their beautiful wood or plastic patterns, and their individual cuts, burns, and gouges were just being discarded by the "artists" who made them unique, I knew I had to preserve their history by printing them.

Whenever I am asked if I print these cutting boards by the "relief" or the "intaglio" method, my answer is "yes and yes" as I ink the boards for both surface and crevices. Consequently, I use more of a "collograph" method which treats the board as if an image has been sculpted onto the plate.

​Please enjoy the cutting boards prints and remember that "Printmakers do it on a bed, under blankets!"